CULTURE WAR

▸ FILE NOTES

The ribbons are real. The war is not. Or the war is real and the ribbons are not. The distinction stopped mattering somewhere around the fourth consecutive year of waking up enlisted in a conflict you did not declare, against an enemy you have never met, over territory that exists only as a trending topic.

A veteran is someone who was changed by service. By that definition the enlistment rate is total. Everyone with a feed has seen combat. Everyone has a deployment they do not talk about. Everyone has a friend they lost — not to death, to a quote-tweet.

The bar on the hat reads as military decoration until you look closer. Each ribbon is a flag. Each flag is a side. Worn together, in a single row, they cancel. This is the only place the culture war is actually won: on a hat, where every banner is reduced to the same half-inch of thread.

You did not choose your branch. You were drafted by a recommendation engine that determined, from your watch history, which trench would keep you watching longest. You have been decorated for engagement. The medals are impressions.

Wear it to signal that you survived. Wear it to signal that there was nothing to survive. Both are true. That is the joke, and the joke is the only honorable discharge on offer.